At the MIT Media Lab, there is a growing community of people interested in food and food related research. My field of research is learning, specifically peer-to-peer learning online and I don’t do active research on food (but for a long time I’ve always played with the idea of changing that).
I’m interested in food along two dimensions. I think the act of preparing and consuming food is inextricably linked with human development. I love eating it and learning about it. I also think food is an important anchor of community.
When the Media Lab wellbeing initiative kicked off, I proposed to fund a small kitchen and a large table for communal lunches. The oldest Lab we know, the kitchen, should be better represented in our environment - and I think that cooking and eating together will have a lot of health benefits for the Lab community.
I recently came across this wonderful book about cooking simple lunches at work, and would like to do something similar, maybe once a week, at the Lab. There is an urban farm one floor above me now and I am hoping we can use some of the fresh produce from the farmto “feed” the Media Lab lunch club.
I also co-host a radio show about food on WMBR (the MIT campus radio) where we interviews chefs about music, and musicians about food, and talk about all kinds of food related things. We also play music requests if you tweet using the #wmbrfood hashtag.